


A Crows Christmas Carol

by Sarai



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Holidays, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, Kaz Brekker-centric, Major character death but it doesn't stick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28248030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: The Feast of Sankt Nikolai approaches, but Kaz Brekker sees no reason that work should stop simply for that! He has no desire for merriment--only cold, hard kruge. There's work to be done. That's far more important than some dinner with "friends" or "holiday break".Three spirits visit to show him the error of his ways.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 11





	1. Haskell's Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> For some of this fic, I've tried to mimic Dickens' style, possibly to a degree that would be plagiaristic if it weren't public domain! For example, he does a lot of referring to people not by name, ie not "Fred" but "Scrooge's nephew". The story begins very close, but will diverge to better match Six of Crows and because, well, Kaz isn't greedy the way Scrooge is!

Per Haskell was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. There was no register to mark the death of a Barrel boss had-been. There was no burial, no undertaker, no mourners: they took his body to the Reaper’s Barge.

Brekker knew he was dead? Of course he did. Brekker had taken the Dregs from him many years ago, but Brekker remained his shadow, his inheritor, his fortune both good and ill. Brekker scarcely rejoiced the day he alone saw Haskell’s gaunt corpse thud to the bodymen’s boat, his withered hand limp and empty and his sorry skiv of a body picked clean of anything worth a few pennies. No, Brekker did not rejoice: he returned to the business of the Crow Club.

Death came surely and readily in the Barrel, and too frequently to be judged of much worth by men who followed the markets. There was no demand for anything in such generous supply.

That very day—of all the good days in the year, the eve of the Feast of Saint Nikolai—Brekker sat busy in his office at the Crow Club. It was damp, chill, punishing weather: brutal to his bad leg. He could hear the revelers on the floor, too jovial for his liking, clinking tin cups, making themselves merry with another spin of makker’s wheel. It was just past three bells, but quite dark already. The Ketterdam fog had kept the sunshine banished all day. The fog obscured the windows, crept through the cracked walls of lesser houses, but more importantly it hid whatever might be lurking like a phantom just beyond the panes. 

Brekker cared for it less than he cared for puppies and cuddles.

“A joyful Saint Nikolai’s, Brekker, and may Ghezen bless you!” cried a cheerful voice. This was the voice of an old friend, who arrived altogether too suddenly.

Brekker silently cursed the fog.

“What business, Councilman?”

He had so warmed himself with his brisk walk through the fog and, judging from the flakes in his hair, the snow, that he was all in a glow; his ruddy cheeks matched his curls, his eyes sparkled. He was that same whimpering puppy Brekker had met those years ago, and any hope he might have harbored that life, in the past few months, had caught him by his silky ears was dashed by that ridiculous smile. 

“On the eve of Saint Nikolai’s?” said the Councilman. “Even you don’t mean that!”

“I do,” growled Brekker. “Joyful Saint Nikolai’s! What right have you to be joyful? What reason have you to be joyful? Your life’s dull enough.”

“All right, then,” returned the Councilman brightly, “what right have you to be dismal? You’ve excitement enough.”

Brekker narrowed his eyes, and his guest’s cheerful face softened.

“Don’t be cross, Kaz.” He had the audacity to speak gently.

“What else can I be, when I live in such a world of rotting skivs? Joyful Saint Nikolai’s! What’s Saint Nikolai’s to you but a time for finding yourself a year older, a time for balancing books you can’t read? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Joyful Saint Nikolai’ on his lips should be drowned in a grain silo!”

“Kaz…”

“Wylan!” Brekker retorted. He had not, to his credit, thrown his ledger book, nor his ink pot, nor swung his cane to, with a crack against bone, restore his peace and quiet. “You may honor Ghezen and the Saints in your own way, and let me honor them in mine.”

“You don’t honor them.”

“Let me dishonor them, then. No god or Saint has ever done me any good, anyway. What is Ghezen but red in your ledger?”

The Councilman’s mouth fell open, whether at the sacrilege or the venom in Brekker’s voice. He shook his head. The snowflakes had melted from his curls now.

“Oh, don’t be like this. Come to dinner with us tomorrow.”

Brekker said that he would see them. “But in Hell first,” he added. 

“Kaz… why?”

“Why did you get married?”

“Because we fell in love.”

“Because you fell in love,” growled Brekker. “Good afternoon, Councilman.”

What had it been now, two years since the wedding? It was sheer injustice that kept the gray from Wylan’s hair, because Ghezen, the Saints, and any other deity watching knew Jesper was enough to wear down anyone. 

“It’s no good with you,” he lamented, something Brekker wished he truly meant but knew he did not. “You don’t even think the marriage is silliest thing we’ve done.”

That was true, not because the marriage lacked silliness, but because Wylan and Jesper had raised wages, encouraged unions, invested in new businesses, and poured a deluge of coins into schools, hospitals, and orphanages. Were Brekker concerned for the public’s opinion, he would resent the Fahey-Van Eck charitable alliance. Luckily he didn’t care what they thought of him. Let the rest of the Council fret. Brekker had business to see to.

“Well, I’ve done my piece. You’re welcome tomorrow. Good afternoon, Kaz.”

Just as he turned to go, the office door flew open, and in rushed a young Dreg, new and fresh-faced with only a few weeks in the Barrel, but a swift hand dipping into pockets.

“Mister Brekker, sir, Mieke’s in the lock-up!” announced the boy.

Brekker sighed. “Thank you, Gerrit. See yourself out.”

“But… Mister Brekker…”

“Are there no beds in the lock-up?”

“There always are.”

“No space for one more? No spare bowls of slop?”

“But they’re awful and all!”

“Then it’ll teach Mieke not to get herself pinched. See yourself out.”

“Is the bail set?” asked the Councilman, who had followed the story with interest. Of course he had something to say, when he heard tale of a lostling to pluck at his tender heartstrings. Brekker still wondered sometimes how he had survived.

Gerrit nodded. “For fifty kruge.”

“And Mieke is your friend?”

Again Gerrit nodded, though Brekker knew the two, and ‘friend’ was a stretch of the definition. 

The Councilman took three twenty-kruge notes from his wallet and handed them to Gerrit as Brekker watched, expression pinched.

After the boy had left, kruge clutched close, Brekker said, “He’s as likely to spend it on sweets as bail.”

With a shrug of his narrow shoulders, the Councilman said, “That’s his choice. Not mine.”

He made his overdue exit and Brekker brushed invisible dust from his desktop.

Bah. Humbug!

* * *

Brekker lay that night in his narrow bed in the attic of the Slat. Little had changed in the years: not his desk of a board balanced across fruit crates, not his collection of sleek-lined dark suits, not his haircut. The attic was familiar, and Brekker liked it. 

He was not bothered by the thought of the Councilman and his husband, who either knew better than to wait for him or deserved the outcome of their own foolishness; nor was he bothered to think of Mieke, in lockup tonight because she needed to learn. He had of course taken his owed 12 kruge. His twenty percent.

Just before sleep claimed him, a shadowy figure moved in the office. Brekker was on his feet in seconds, a knife clutched in his hand.

“Who’s there?”

The shape made no answer. 

Brekker crept forward, blade at the ready, until he had a full view of the figure. He looked gray as old clay, an effect of the moonlight through the window no doubt. So was the resemblance this figure bore to a former employer.

“Put it away, boy,” said the voice of Per Haskell.

“You’re dead,” Brekker informed him.

“Am I.”

Haskell turned. 

He was dead. Dead, and gray, with a thick chain wrapped around him and over his left shoulder, a stove in piece by his left eye. His withered hand lay as empty as the last time Brekker saw it, the day Haskell’s body fell to the bodymen’s boat, one more for the reaper’s barge. 

Brekker slid his knife into its sheath. This was only a dream.

The dream that was Per Haskell lifted its hands, bringing with it the heavy chain, its links scraping audibly. It had a scent, or Haskell did, of the decaying things the tide left on rare scorching days in Ketterdam, those handful of summer afternoons that slushed with cruelly cheerful weather.

“I forged this chain in life—”

Brekker was only a few steps from his bed.

“You will one day wear such a chain!” Haskell called after him as Brekker drew up the covers. “There is hope yet for you, boy!”

No hope for a good night’s sleep if this phantom kept running its gob.

“You will be visited by three spirits. Heed their warnings!”

Three more dreams like this one, his mind’s creation of a pitiful warning? That was all he needed: one more night’s lost rest!


	2. The First Spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *denotes a line taken directly from the text 

Brekker was roused from his sleep that night by a deep, hollow, melancholy chime: one bell. And the wall of his room split open. 

This was not the door, nor the window, but the very wall of his room directly before his eyes, split apart with a flash of light, and Brekker found himself face-to-face with an unearthly visitor.

It was a familiar figure: its toothy grin and tousled hair that of a child, yet with the eyes of an old man. Its skin was brown as if from weeks in the sun, though Ketterdam had been fog and drear for weeks now. Its feet were bare, and though still illuminated by a fading glow, it clearly wore clothes that had seen better days: patched trousers, a threadbare shirt. But it was smiling. 

‘It’. 

Brekker gaped, because the unwelcomeness, the suddenness, the sheer intrusion was not the strangest thing. That was the phantom’s face was a familiar one. 

“Jordie?”

The phantom laughed. “That’s me, little brother!”

But Brekker wasn’t, not anymore. He peered into Jordie’s face and tried to remember if he had looked so young when he died. Had his cheeks been so full, before their fall from what little grace life ever afforded two scrubby boys from the back end of nowhere?

Was this half-grown thing truly the valiant knight from all dreams of his youth?

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to remind you of Saint Nikolai’s feast days in your past.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Brekker replied dryly. “What a valid use of your afterlife.”

“I’m here to save you, then.”

The response sparked a flare of whitehot anger in Brekker—too late for that—but he couldn’t. This was Jordie.

He offered his hand. “Get up, lazy! There’s work to be done!”

The words reverberated through Brekker like the clap of a bell. Even before he touch Jordie’s glowing hand, before the room fell away, Brekker was in a field near Lij, eyes half-cracked against the bright autumn sun. The younger Brekker had been known to steal a nap now and then, and the elder to wake him with a helpful foot to his ribs. 

They saw it now in winter, Saint Nikolai’s feast day. Not a vestige of the city was to be seen, and the heavy fog had gone with it, leaving a clear, cold winter day, snow upon the ground rolled into a bottom-heavy likeness of a man. A recollection came to him of another snowman, built behind the small farmhouse and mostly melted by the then very young Brekker after an extremely generous drink of water. Had that been this year? He recalled many such snowmen, many handfuls of snow rubbed into his hair, warm teas they drank huddled by the stove with Da.

“Your lip is trembling,” said Jordie.

“It’s cold,” growled Brekker, who remained untouched by the memory’s chill.

As they approached the farmhouse, the door flew open and out tumbled a tiny boy, his elder brother close on his heels. Brekker flinched back.

“These are but shadows of the things that had been,” said Jordie’s ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.”*

The boy scrambled to his feet, but his brother was quicker, knocking him down again. They tussled in the snow for a while, laughter ringing over the snow-white fields. Brekker recalled these times. Now he recognized that elder brother’s actions for what they were, for the flop he took, for the true reason the little boy managed to pin his brother in the snow.

“I have you now!” cried the boy. “I’ve got you!”

Laughing, his brother said, “You have! You’ve gotten so strong, Kaz!”

“You were a good brother,” said Brekker, looking at the two boys. 

He knew what would come next. He knew they would fetch kindling and firewood, and the sticks would become swords and the boys would become knights, and that night they would eat cabbage soup and yesterday’s bread with their da. They would cuddle together against the cold and giggle as each tried to pass the loudest gas. So much he had forgotten over the years.

“I loved you,” said Jordie.

Brekker dashed what might well have been a tear from his cheek.

“You died a child,” Brekker now realized. “You seemed so much older, not only a man but the bravest and strongest of men. You never even had a chance to leave a legacy.”

“I left you,” said the ghost.

Brekker nodded; yes, Jordie left him. 

“I’ll avenge you,” he swore. “Rollins didn’t suffer enough for what he took.”

“What? Kaz, no—”

“Maybe I will kill his boy this time,” Brekker considered. The child was old enough now for his father to truly love him… or would he wait, a little, until dear Alby was nine, just as Brekker himself had been. 

“It won’t bring me back.”

“No,” agreed Brekker, “but it might make some justice.”

“Maybe another memory…”

* * *

The farmhouse disappeared. 

Instead, Brekker saw a familiar young man and woman. The woman was Suli, with the posture of an acrobat and a long braid, and the two stood together at the mouth of a well-shadowed alleyway, watching as stadwatch officers shackled the crew of a ship that had bribed its way into the harbor. Its cargo of stolen boys and girls had been unloaded. They would be given the choice of passage home or resettling in Kerch, a somewhat more attractive prospect since the opening of Hendriks House, which helped adults find employment and get on their feet, and the Van Eck Foundlings’ Home, for those not yet old enough. There were quite a few ‘Van Eck’ charities in Ketterdam, most serving the Barrel.

“This is a good day,” said the young woman.

“It’s night,” replied her companion. 

Brekker turned away from his young self, to Jordie’s ghost. 

“We did well that day,” he said. He had nearly forgotten it happened on the Saint Nikolai’s feast day, though now, thinking back, he believed she mentioned that. He believed he teased her.

“Come with me,” she said.

Brekker wished he might go. He knew his younger self wanted to. That he recalled with the clarity of clean pain—the thought made him think of his leg. It hadn’t bothered him once on this trip, and he had not thought to grab his cane. The wonder of his experience had overtaken him; now he felt naked without it. 

His younger self had the cane. He leaned on it as he shook his head. 

“I have business, Inej,” he said. 

“You can take a few hours. This is a victory.”

“There’ll be other victories.”

“Kaz… I thought we were fighting this together. I thought we were partners.”

“Aren’t we working together?” he asked impatiently.

One of the arrested men tried to make a break to freedom behind them, and was stopped, and given a solid thump from the stadwatch for his troubles. He cursed them as she said, “I thought you would be with me.”

“I am with you,” he said impatiently. “If you had the idea this would be something different, I’m not to blame. And if you want out…”

A stubborn look on his face, Brekker turned to Jordie.

“So?” he demanded. “You think I don’t remember? She took a lover after that. I don’t care who keeps her bed warm.” And she had taken to visiting Ketterdam less and less. What did he care? Business boomed in the Barrel, maybe more so without her moralizing. 

“This is your past, little brother.”

“I know.”

“One more,” Jordie said.

* * *

This time they were in another place, one Brekker recognized: he knew the tastefully understated furniture, parquet floors, and the man currently reading aloud to two small children. They were too young to be useful. 

“This isn’t Saint Nikolai’s,” said Brekker, despite the holly boughs over the mantle. “They throw a party on Saint Nikolai’s.”

“But it is your past,” replied Jordie, even as the front door opened and shut audibly. 

Brekker wasn’t at all surprised to see the Councilman arrive, nor to see the previously peaceful children scramble to their feet and jump on the settee, calling for their papa’s attention. The boy was more enthusiastic, the girl following his example. The Councilman hugged them each in turn, first the boy, who hugged him gleefully, then squirmed away to try to check his pockets, coming away triumphant with a piece of toffee in wax paper. As he tore into the treat, the girl wound her arms around his neck.

“Rough day, my love?”

“He only just sat still! I swear he’s been bouncing off the walls since the nanny left.”

“Well, he takes after his da.”

“Hilarious. So droll.”

The Councilman kissed his husband, then said, “I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.” He carried the little girl still, bouncing her gently. She was too big for that. He produced a toffee from his interior pocket; she took it, but didn't eat it.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Kaz Brekker, looking as grim as ever.”

“Saints, don’t tell Inej that!”

“Of course, I—”

“Papa, Papa!” The child was back, grasping at the bottom of the Councilman’s jacket and tugging. “Play with me!”

“I have no regrets,” Brekker stated. The little family looked comfortable together. He shuddered to imagine holding a toddler on his lap, recalled the mess and fuss after they adopted the twins. Children were messy and derivative.

Just as he thought to ask why the ghost had brought him here, one more person joined them. Brekker’s jaw tightened. She looked different with her dark hair loose, soft slippers on her feet. She carried her knives, anyway, but she was relaxed, not reaching for them.

“You want to torture me?!” Brekker demanded.

Jordie shook his head. “I determine nothing of what you see here,” he said. “These are the shadows of the things that have been. They are what they are, do not blame me.”*

“Take me away from here,” Brekker demanded before she could open her mouth. “Leave me alone!”

All at once the merry fire, fine furnishings, and pleasant company faded, and Brekker found himself once more in his attic room, lit only by the glow of the spirit. 

“Kaz.”

He wrapped his fingers tight around his crow’s-head cane and swung it in a neat arc through the spirit. It did no harm, but Jordie disappeared anyway, leaving Brekker alone with his cane and his thoughts in a dark room. He clutched the walking stick tight as he fell into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still staying in some ways true to canon, the divergences are starting to show up! Scrooge wished he had done more for a vulnerable child; Kaz... well... 
> 
> I hope you're enjoying this fic, and if so I encourage you to leave a comment! The second spirit should be on their way soon.


	3. The Impostor-Spirit

“Kaz! Come on!”

Brekker kept his eyes shut tight, as if he might, by refusing to see what fresh Hell had visited him, refuse to engage with it. But he knew it was inevitable. The sudden light glowed against his eyelids. Something had come, he knew, another spirit, another phantom to show him… what?

He opened his eyes.

Before him was his own room, but it had undergone a surprising transformation. He left his bed and had a proper look, scowling as he did. The walls and ceiling were adorned with living branches and leaves, holly and ivy painting the walls green. A merry fire blazed upon the hearth of a room that had not previously had a hearth. His desk had been draped in a rich red cloth, sparkling gold decorations painted to its edges, and upon it lay a proper feast. There was a turkey and a whole pig, roasted with an apple in its mouth; there was marzipan and a round of kerstkrans, the sweet bread generously studded with glazed berries and fat with almond paste; there were apples, oranges, and pears, all plump and gorgeous. There was a steaming bowl of hot chocolate and Brekker, to his credit, did not dash it to the floor with his cane. But he wanted to.

There, in the midst of this splendor, sat none other than Jesper Fahey-Van Eck, sipping from a goblet of mulled wine as he watched the door. He paused abruptly, spotting Brekker.

“Come in! Come in, it’s been too long!”

Brekker scowled at the merriment, at the mess it had made of his space. He did not like other people touching his things.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I am the spirit of Saint Nikolai’s day present!”

“You’re not dead.”

He was not. Brekker had seen the Councilman earlier that day—or was it yesterday already? Had this madness dragged him to Saint Nikolai’s feast day already? Whatever the date, the Councilman would have said something.

The so-called spirit only rolled his eyes.

“One needn’t be dead to love the holidays,” he said, then reached for the feast on Brekker’s desk and broke a piece off a cookie, scattering crumbs. “Speculaas,” he sighed. The traditional Kerch spiced cookies were admittedly delicious. But that was no excuse for a mess—for any of this!

Brekker examined the man. He wore a long coat, almost a kefta but in green, nothing beneath it so Brekker could just make out the familiar scars and the small rabbit tattoo on the sharpshooter’s chest. His feet were bare beneath his bright yellow trousers. Deplorable fashion sense aside, he looked well. His hair hung in long braids, his eyes sparkled and his lips curled up in a smile.

“You’re not dead,” Brekker repeated.

The spirit who was not Jesper sighed again, in impatience this time, and sat forward, leaving his goblet on the table.

“And furthermore,” Brekker pressed, “your husband would have a conniption to see so much food put to waste.”

“Share it among the Dregs,” replied Jesper. “Come on. I shall prove myself both here and alive, and you shall have a listen to what I wish to say. Agreed?”

Seeing the quickest path back to his bed, Brekker said, “Agreed.”

The scene changed.

* * *

Brekker’s merrily vandalized office vanished.

Instead, he stood in a lavish bedroom, one he recognized well. Through the window he noted the severe weather. And on the bed, huddled under a mountain of comforters, was one Jesper Fahey-Van Eck. A boy shook him, several years older than the last time Brekker had seen him but not less energetic.

“Da, you have to wake up.”

The half-sleeping man groaned. “I don’t… too early.”

“Do so,” insisted the boy. “Papa said.”

“Yeah, well, Papa’s not the boss of me.”

“Yes he is…”

Brekker snorted. That was more plausible, a sleepy Jesper refusing to leave his bed, far more than the half-dressed Jesper currently standing spirit-like beside him. Well, the spirit part. He could admit that Jesper had never been possessed with an over-abundance of physical modesty.

The boy trotted to the bedroom door.

“PAPA!” he shouted. “DA SAYS HE WON’T GET UP AND HE SAYS YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF HIM!!”

“What the,” exclaimed the real Jesper, not the spirit one, sitting up. “Dai!”

While Jesper remained in bed, his husband joined him fully dressed in a fine, dark suit. He touched the top of his son’s head gently.

“Go and join your sister in the sitting room, hm?”

“I tried to wake him up like you said.”

“I know you did, you did very well. Jes, you promised you’d join us at church today.”

Jesper groaned. “I know.”

Dai shut the door behind him. When the two were alone, unaware of the crimelord and impostor-spirit observing them, Wylan settled on the edge of the bed and grinned.

“Not the boss of you, huh?” he asked.

Jesper caught the edge in his voice, the one that turned Brekker’s stomach.

“What’re you gonna do about it?” Jesper asked.

Brekker turned to the impostor. “Take me away from here before I lose my dinner.” He could endure the visions of his past, stoking the fires of rage too long left to burn to embers, but he would not be subjected to observing flirtations. Had these spirits no decency?!

The impostor-spirit nodded, and once more the room fell away.

* * *

A rather less decorated sort of place arose instead, a solid but unsteady floor and a steel-gray sky above it, a column of smoke rising behind them as The Wraith’s full sails carried her away from whichever slaver she had vanquished that day. The ship pitched and spray peppered those on deck.

Several haggard people, desperate, filthy, stood on the deck. Others sat, their legs too weak to support them. The crew of The Wraith brought them blankets and water, which most drank so desperately it splashed down their already wet shirts.

“Welcome aboard,” announced a woman with a long, dark braid. She had a hand in freeing them. So said the fresh blood on her shirt. “I am Captain Ghafa and on this ship you are under my protection. My crew and I will see you home, or wherever you prefer. For now, eat, drink, and rest. You are safe.”

Two of her rescues began to cry.

“This is how she spends a feast day?” Brekker asked. “What would her Saints say?”

“She will pray tonight,” said the impostor-spirit.

Brekker needn’t be told of the holiness and devotion of Inej Ghafa. He had witnessed firsthand her unshakable faith. Absurd, he deemed it, that level of trust in something thoroughly unproven, but it made her strong. It carried her through the impossible. 

As they watched, another woman approached the Captain. She took her hand. The words she spoke were low, too low for Brekker to hear, but he saw the smile at the corners of her lips as she looked away.

Her expression faltered. 

For a moment, staring directly at him, the Captain frowned. Wind toyed with loose strands of her hair. She tucked them behind her ear absently, eyes still fixed on him.

“Inej?”

She shook her head.

“Yes,” she said, “you’re right.”

“She’s doing well,” said Brekker, hiding the breathlessness, the racing heart that came of being seen by Captain Ghafa. Or of seeing. “Good for her. I’m happy for her,” he said evenly.

“To them, she must seem very much a Saint herself,” said the impostor-spirit. It was likely so. She did rescue them on Saint Nikolai’s feast day. 

“Bah! Their own foolishness.”

The crew were already helping the rescued folk off the deck.

“Is that supposed to make me regret anything?” said Brekker, watching the Captain as she watched her refugees guided to their rest. “Jesper and Wylan are happy in their messy life. Inej has her purpose. What right have you to deem mine lesser?”

“Maybe one more visit will help.”

* * *

In its place arose a familiar part of Ketterdam, a narrow side-street edged on either side by tall, close buildings leaning drunkenly against one another. Brekker had few dealings in this neighborhood, but he knew the ways of it in poorer areas. He knew the chill kept down the reek, but the slop strewn by the side would be near-choking in summer. He watched his step as the spirit led him into a dingy foyer. They climbed the rickety staircase, and though Brekker’s leg bothered him none, he leaned on his cane as much for the familiarity.   
  
A man stepped onto the stairs ahead of Brekker and the impostor-spirit on their way from the second floor to the third. He dressed tidily but cheaply, the stitching already wearing at the seams of his trousers, loose at the back of his waistcoat. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and seemed at first to be clearing his nose into it, but no sound of such clearing came, and after a moment Brekker realized the kerchief was scented.  
  
The man paused in front of one door, no more or less remarkable than another, just as much in need of a lick of paint, the knob as tarnished. Here and there a number hung from one door or another, but not enough that one might surmise the true number of any. He paused, and he knocked.  
  
A moment passed before the door was opened. Was this man some relative, Brekker wondered, a long-lost brother or cousin, perhaps even a lover—that seemed the sort of business the impostor-spirit liked to show him.  
  
“Your payment, Antonov.”  
  
“But… but today is Saint Nikolai’s Day, Mister Van Dijk,” objected the man, his Ravkan accent thick around his words.  
  
“Indeed,” agreed the man Brekker now realized to be his landlord, “and a wet, cold day, too, and ‘twould be a fair tragedy to find oneself on the streets on such a day.”  
  
“Please—two days more? I lost my position, but I can find another.”  
  
“Mm. Many find themselves in such dire circumstances these days.”  
  
Antonov nodded, relief clear on his ruddy face.  
  
“So there are many who would be grateful for a day’s work—say, removing one’s belongings, meager though they are…”  
  
Antonov paled. He returned to his room—peering through the doorway, Brekker saw that was all it was, a single room with a thin mattress on the floor and a box of his belongings. Antonov rifled through the box.  
  
His face drawn, he offered something to the landlord.  
  
“It was my grandmother’s,” he said.  
  
The landlord took the necklace and examined it, turning the little charm over in his hands; there looked to be a saint etched upon it, though Brekker had no urge to draw closer and determine which.  
  
“Another week, then, Antonov.”  
  
“She’s worth a month!”  
  
The landlord hesitated, his nostrils flaring. “One week,” he said. “With another to follow if the pawnbroker is generous. A happy Saint Nikolai’s to you.”  
  
“Yes—and to you, yes,” said Antonov.   
  
As the landlord moved to the next doorway down the hall, the impostor-spirit asked, “Do you feel nothing for him?”  
  
“What would you have me feel?” Brekker asked. “The man will do as he must, as we all must. He will find work. The gangs have a place for anyone willing to earn it.”  
  
The impostor-spirit frowned in a very un-Jesper-like way.  
  
“And if he fails?”  
  
“There are always more beds in the lock-up.”  
  
The landlord now had reached the next destination, and once more he knocked. Then again. It took a third knock, a powerful one that shook the door in its frame, to see any result.  
  
A child stood in the doorway. She was small, with a blanket around her shoulders and a thready pair of trousers under her nightshirt, a hole in her sock showing a second sock beneath it. Still she shivered, her face pale but for the spots of red on her cheeks.  
  
“I have come for the rent, Gertrude,” said the landlord.  
  
“I… I…”  
  
“Do you have ten kruge for me?”  
  
“I…”  
  
She did not. That much was clear.  
  
“Please,” she managed, “I… M-Mieke will be h-home…”  
  
“Gertrude,” scolded the landlord gently. “I promised your sister another two days on her rent, was that not generous of me?”  
  
“I… sh-she did say… you w-w-were a good man,” shivered the little girl.  
  
Brekker glanced at the impostor-spirit. “We don’t need to see this,” he said.  
  
“It’s Saint Nikolai’s Day for her, too.”  
  
“I am a very good man,” agreed the landlord, “and a generous man. That’s twice now, twice in three months I’ve made an extra trip here, out of my way to do it, you know.”  
  
“Yes… yessir.”  
  
“Isn’t that generous of me? To give you so much of my time and to ask nothing for it?”  
  
Gertrude nodded, eyes wide. She didn’t understand what was happening, but Brekker did, and he set his jaw. He would not be moved.   
  
He understood now why the impostor-spirit chose this place. The little girl’s sister, Mieke, was a Dreg. She had been pinched that day, and her ‘friend’ Gerrit failed to bring the Councilman’s kruge for her bail.  
  
“Perhaps you have something to trade to me,” he suggested. “Something of worth squirrel away. Have you something of worth, little squirrel?”  
  
“We… I…”  
  
“I’ll have a look,” said the landlord, striding into the room.   
  
Brekker followed, aware already that the landlord searched not for something of value. The small collection of rags they called clothing were worth far less than the ten kruge the man asked. Their stub of a candle, a stained book with half the pages missing, their moldy bit of cheese and bread… none of it amounted to much. When the landlord took the few coins hidden away beneath a loose floorboard, Gertrude began to cry.  
  
“Why have you brought me here?” Brekker demanded of the impostor-spirit. “Should I care for this child? Bring the Councilman. Wylan cares already; for me to care would be redundant and a waste of time.”  
  
“You could do something,” said the impostor-spirit.  
  
“I am not the architect of her grief, you worthless skiv! Teach him goodness, why don’t you!”  
  
“Not everyone can learn!”  
  
That snapped Brekker’s jaw shut, for he, too, had uttered such sentiments before and knew them to be true. He never thought of learning as a means of acquiring goodness, however. As little Gertrude break into a coughing fit that left her doubled over and hacking, he knew this was the cruelty of the spirits. They might have saved her. They might have brought the Councilman, or Jesper, the real Jesper. Instead it was Brekker who watched as the shivering child drew on every article of clothing in her possession, and some sure to be Mieke’s as well, and carried down the stairs what scraps the landlord refused. She paused at the foyer, but he removed her bodily from the building, letting the door close with a thump.  
  
“You are as cruel as that man,” said Brekker to the spirit. “You make feasts of nothing and move through this world with a thought. You bring me here instead of making that child a good pair of boots and a hot meal.”  
  
“My time on this land is brief,” replied the impostor-spirit. “Yours is longer. There are more like her, you know.”  
  
“It’s the Barrel,” spat the Bastard. “There are always more like her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come! Oh boy do I have plans for this...
> 
> I hope you're enjoying the story so far and don't mind the OC-heavy chapter! In an earlier sketch of this fic, I looked at having Tiny Tim played by Wylan, who would have developed a lung condition from the tannery. He just fit better as Fred! As much as I tried not to lean too hard into making this a Wesper fic, it... sort of turned into one. Just a bit.


	4. The Final Spirit

Brekker did not return to the Slat. Instead the third spirit approached him slowly, gravely, draped and hooded. When it came near him, Brekker remained upright and unimpressed.  
  
The spirit was shrouded in a deep black cloak, its face obscured, one hand outstretched. But despite all this, it was not difficult to distinguish from others.  
  
“Helvar,” Brekker said with a nod of greeting.   
  
“By Djel,” swore the spirit, yanking down his hood. There stood Matthias Helvar, long-haired and icy-eyed. “How did you know?”  
  
Brekker looked him up and down. The Fjerdan was a giant, a slab of a man even in death. There could be no mistaking him for another.   
  
“You are about to show me things that have not happened, yes? Let’s get it over with. I’m missing valuable sleeping time.”  
  
“There is a purpose to this, Brekker.”  
  
“Did you meet Djel?” asked Brekker.  
  
Helvar scowled.   
  
“Go on, then.”  
  
The scowl only deepening, Helvar’s spirit nodded. He moved away. Brekker, who saw no choice, followed after him. By now his bad leg ached. Had the pain dogged him into dreams?  
  
They stayed in the Barrel, though the streets and canals seemed to move around them, a familiar scene soon materializing. They came to a dim shop, a narrow space like an alleyway that forgot to be outdoors, its windows so grimed over they blocked most of the city’s already diminished sunlight. Within were piled heaps of all manner of thing just better than the refuse pile: rags, stubs of pencils, old shoes, jars of cloudy liquor.   
  
Sitting among the wares, close by a charcoal stove, was an old man, bent and gray. Brekker knew him. Kikkert, the pawnbroker, and one of the city’s least reputable pawnbrokers at that. As they watched, a boy entered the shop, his dripping nose and ruddy cheeks reminiscent of—not that it mattered. He had barely cleared the doorway but another boy burst in, already pulling in a breath of air to call with.  
  
“Mister Kikkert,” he got out, then fell into a coughing fit. It likely came from all the dust, but Brekker stepped away from him all the same as the first boy thumped him heartily on the back.  
  
Once the boys recovered, they approached Kikkert. The first boy produced a pair of boots, simple cufflinks, and a quality pen.  
  
“Did you imagine you had invented death?” Brekker asked the spirit of Helvar. He recognized those cufflinks. They were simple but good make, and they were his. He had gone to the Reaper’s Barge, back to that damp grave from which he had once escaped, to which he had always known he would return.  
  
The more enthusiastic of the boys offered blankets to Kikkert.  
  
“There was no one to see you off,” Helvar said. “No one to mourn you, no one—”  
  
“I’m dead,” Brekker interrupted. “I understand. I am well-acquainted with death, Helvar. Will you take me to see the Wraith now? To show her solemn moment and useless prayers? Or the Councilman and his husband mourning with their tender hearts? I _know_ I will die, and death is the end of it all. Did you truly believe this would change me?”  
  
The spirit faltered, scowling disapproval, but Brekker saw that he had understood the meaning of this visit. The goodness of his past was meant to soften him, the joy available in his future to tempt him, the minor breadth of his days to frighten him. Brekker knew of these things already, and resolved nothing but to sleep more deeply. A night’s unbroken rest would do him more good than this nonsense!  
  
“They have room for you in their hearts,” the spirit said. “They will welcome you, even as you have become.”  
  
“They have hearts because of me,” Brekker said. “Did you look into their futures without me? The Wraith would have died in the brothel. The Councilman, coughing up blood in the tannery. Did you look into the future of the desperate grisha bartering his meager power into jobs with the gangs for one more night at the tables until someone got tired of waiting to see a bill paid in full?”  
  
The spirit remained dumbstruck.  
  
“Who are they to ask for more? Who are _you_?”  
  
A part of him acknowledged that Helvar probably had most cause to resent him of anyone from the Ice Court job. Only Helvar had not survived it. At least he died in his lover’s arms rather than bit by a desert lizard or skewered by an elephant in the Hellshow. At least his hollow corpse was laid to rest in his homeland, not burned, as Brekker's would be. That was his homeland: the ashes of the Reaper's Barge.  
  
“Return me home now,” instructed Brekker. “My time is better used elsewhere. And yours is done.” He was tired and his leg needed rest.  
  
“This will haunt you,” warned Helvar as the grim shop dissolved around him, his bedroom in the Slat returning.  
  
Brekker raised an eyebrow.   
  
He said, “See what good that does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was where the divergences in the two stories, clearly, came to fruition! Scrooge's greed was a genuine character flaw; Kaz's greed has always been a front, one developed through desperation and pain. Kaz's ruthlessness is likely still keeping him alive.
> 
> One more chapter to go! What do you expect? A change of heart from Kaz? Or that he'll send someone to Fjerda to burn Matthias's bones out of pure spite?
> 
> Let me know if you're enjoying it and if there's anything in particular you're hoping to see included!


	5. The End

Jesper and Wylan Fahey-Van Eck threw a dinner party to remember in honor of Saint Nikolai on his feast day. What was a feast day without a feast, after all! Though, as it was for Saint Nikolai, the party was also a fundraiser to support the foundlings’ homes in the city. But it was a party nonetheless, and the mansion on the Geldstraat hummed with light and bright chatter well into the evening. It was just as well, as snow swirled outdoors.  
  
Jesper was shining, in his element, and Wylan could never replicate his husband’s enthusiasm, but his love for the man gave him a glow of his own. Their guests were happy, well-fed merchers given permission to shuck off their solemnity for a few hours.  
  
Only one person wasn’t happy. That person was, instead, overwhelmingly sleepy. She perched on an out-of-the-way chair with her chin drooping toward her chest. Her small feet swung, rustling the cheery yellow silk of her skirt.  
  
“Okay,” Wylan decided as she startled awake once more, “that’s it, young lady. Time for bed.”  
  
“But I’m not sle…” she tried to object, only to interrupt herself with a yawn.  
  
“Bethan…”  
  
“Papa, it’s Saint Nikolai’s!”  
  
“And you are exhausted,” he said, crouching in front of her. “What would Saint Nikolai say to me if he knew I kept my daughter up past her bedtime, hm?”  
  
She pouted. “But—”  
  
“Mister Van Eck?”  
  
Wylan turned. He recognized the voice and knew who he would see: a maid, one who had nowhere else to be today and received the traditional double holiday pay.  
  
“There’s a… um… a matter, sir. An unusual one that requires your attention. Just at the foyer.”  
  
“Of course. I’m on my way.” It was strange, but living a normal life had never been one of Wylan Fahey-Van Eck’s stronger suits. He stood and caught his husband’s attention with a gentle touch on his arm. “Jes, would you put our daughter to bed before she falls asleep on her feet?”  
  
“I’m not sleepy, Da!”  
  
“Try it anyway, Bethie,” Jesper said, lifting her up. She muttered objections even as she snuggled against him, her feet dangling in their woolen slippers.  
  
Wylan spared a long glance as Jesper carried Bethan toward the stairs. Dai had given up an hour earlier, passed out on the settee with hot chocolate spilled down the front of his shirt. Wylan still felt his heart warming when he watched Jesper with their children. He was an amazing father and the twins adored him, and their family was everything Wylan had never dared to dream of: a wonderful husband, happy children, his mother thriving, his father burned two years prior on the Reaper’s Barge.  
  
With Jesper and Bethan headed upstairs, Wylan made his way through the throng of guests to the foyer.  
  
A small child stood there, shivering, sweating, and bright red in the face. Her clothes were ragged and she was in dire need of a bath and a hot meal.  
  
Wylan went to one knee, making himself smaller. He remembered being so little, the feeling of adults towering over him.  
  
“Hello there,” he said.  
  
“A-are…” began the child, then interrupted herself with a coughing fit. Wylan offered her a handkerchief when the cough turned bad.  
  
He knew that sound. When he had contracted lung fever as a small child, he had coughed that way.  
  
“You must forgive me for asking you a very forward question but do you have someone waiting to look after you? Your mama and papa?”  
  
She shook her head. For the first time, he noticed the paper clutched desperately in her hand.  
  
“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” he asked. He already knew the answer.  
  
Her eyes welled up. Rather than answer his question, she asked, “Are you the Councilman?”  
  
“Yes. Yes, I am.”  
  
The girl thrust the paper at him.  
  
“He said I’m to give this to you. Only to you.”  
  
Wylan accepted it, but that wasn’t his biggest concern.  
  
“Would you like to stay here?” he asked. This seemed like exactly the sort of con Kaz would pull, sending a sickly child to kick off some sort of break-in, but Wylan couldn’t imagine Kaz coming too close to such a slight, runny-nosed wreck. “There’s a spare room upstairs and we’ll find a medik to listen to your lungs.”  
  
The university hospital always had a medik on duty. There would be a fuss, but Wylan could soothe any concerns with an allusion to his position and a generous payment.  
  
The child nodded and Wylan breathed easier. He had been the same once, so desperate for anyone to show him kindness, to _help_ him—until he learned that help was all too often advanced payment for a deal he hadn’t known he was entering. The girl accepted his offer without hesitation.  
  
She still believed the world was good.  
  
“Will you tell me your name?”  
  
“Gertrude.”  
  
“All right, Gertrude. Let’s see about getting you some dinner and something clean to wear, to start with.”  
  
Later, they could figure out where the girl came from and why she hadn’t gone to one of the foundlings’ homes. Right now he had a more pressing matter.  
  
“Wylan, is everything all right?”  
  
Wylan looked up. “We have a visitor, Mama. This is Gertrude. She’s going to stay with us for a little while.”  
  
“Well, good evening, Gertrude.” Marya Hendriks was coming on in years and not as comfortable crouching as her son was, but she leaned down to offer a welcoming smile. “You look like you could use a warm bath. Do you like bubbles?”  
  
“Bubbles?”  
  
“You’re certainly in for a treat, then.” Marya offered her hand.  
  
When Wylan was small, he had been handed off to nannies quite early, and Marya wouldn’t have dreamed of running a bubble bath. Things were done that way in Geldin District, it was a point of pride when a merchant’s wife returned to her social and ethical duties. But Wylan hadn’t felt that way when he and Jesper adopted the twins, and it had been absolutely unthinkable to Jesper, and Marya found herself involved in her grandchildren’s lives in a way she had never been for her son. She found it quite rewarding, in fact.  
  
It was an unexpectedly pleasant evening for Gertrude. She scrubbed herself clean with soap that smelled of lavender, dressed in a soft flannel nightgown, and ate the biggest piece of chocolate cake she had ever seen. (“Are you sure you wouldn’t like—” “Saints, Wylan, stop trying to give the child vegetables, she’s had a very trying evening!”) The visit from the medik was considerably less enjoyable, but afterward, she curled up under a warm quilt on a real bed, answered a few questions, and drifted off to sleep.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wylan had done his best that night. Between seeing Gertrude comforted and tucked away, between checking on the twins (both sound asleep, though Dai had kicked the blankets off), between seeing to his guests, somehow he had managed not to utterly lose control. Or rather, he held control. He held it until he slumped down on the edge of his bed just past one bell and half chime, too tired to bother undoing shirt buttons or cufflinks or even his shoes.  
  
“I thought it was better,” he groaned. “I thought…”  
  
“It _is_ better,” Jesper agreed. He propped himself up on one elbow, not willing to get out from beneath the covers, but listening.  
  
“The girls should have had somewhere to go.”  
  
Gertrude and her sister, Mieke, hadn’t been able to stay together if they sought help. A workhouse would take Mieke but not Gertrude and an orphanage would take Gertrude but not Mieke—so Mieke had turned to the gangs instead.  
  
“Take your shoes off,” Jesper said.  
  
Wylan obeyed, removing his shoes as he said, “They should have had someplace to go. Maybe everyone should, maybe…” He got as far as removing his socks before turning to Jesper again. “Maybe everyone should have a place to live, but how do we do that?”  
  
“That’s a pretty big question, Wy. Trousers, love.”  
  
“Right! But it must be possible—he wouldn’t have said anything if he didn’t think there was a solution, and—Ghezen, maybe I should check with the stadwatch—”  
  
“They won’t release anyone on bail at this time of night.”  
  
“Well, maybe not… normally,” Wylan allowed. Maybe he could convince them to make an exception.  
  
Maybe he would be at the stadhall at eight bells to bring Gertrude’s sister home.  
  
“Wylan…” Jesper sighed. “You know I love you. You know I love your passion for the people of this city. But it is two bells, you’re exhausted, and you have your trousers around your knees. They won’t bail anyone until eight bells and you need to sleep.”  
  
Wylan sighed. “You’re right,” he ceded, and shucked off his trousers. Still the words haunted him as he removed his cufflinks, leaving them on the bedside table along with the note. It was brief, just two words. What had Kaz meant by it? He had a plan, of course, but neither Wylan nor Jesper had a mind for the multi-layer manipulations Kaz would lay.  
  
Things needed to change, though. How many children like Gertrude would be on the streets tonight? Or would turn to the gangs and fail, as Mieke had? Or succeed, as Kaz did? Ghezen’s ledger, Wylan didn’t know which was worse.  
  
Wylan knew what he was supposed to do now. He was supposed to lie down and go to sleep. Instead he sat on the edge of the bed, jaw clenched because his underclothes were nowhere near warm enough for the winter night, too lost in thoughts to sleep.  
  
“There’s a way.”  
  
There had to be. Kaz saw it, Wylan just had to… to…  
  
“Okay,” Jesper said. He sat up, wrapped his arms around Wylan, and drew him under the covers. “Enough. Enough now. You can cuddle and fret at the same time.”  
  
Wylan wasn’t sure he could, actually. There was something too soothing about lying here with Jesper’s arms around him. It took away his frustration that he hadn’t been able to help before things turned desperate for Gertrude and Mieke.  
  
“Need my nightshirt,” he mumbled.   
  
“Do you?”  
  
“No… ’s better to have a husband.”  
  
Jesper laughed.  
  
“I’ll f…” Wylan interrupted himself to yawn. “Figure out… something…”  
  
“Shh. I know. Tomorrow we can go back to saving the world, but tonight you need to sleep.”  
  
“Mmm…”  
  
Whether that was a building objection or sound of agreement, neither of them learned. Wylan was halfway asleep already. Jesper reached over him to turn off the lamp and Wylan barely stirred.  
  
They would, of course. They would go back to saving the world tomorrow, starting first thing with Mieke’s bail. They would look for the cracks where the smallest folks slipped through, and the gaps where the biggest hid their cruelties. They had made Kerch better, and they would make Kerch better, and Ghezen be damned for it! (Jesper had been known to indulge in blasphemy, but in his defense, Wylan looked so cute when he was scandalized!)  
  
For tonight, Jesper and Wylan Fahey-Van Eck cuddled close and drifted off to sleep.  
  
They knew that somewhere in the city, Kaz Brekker was up to something. Somewhere, his brilliant, wicked mind spun ploys others would never dream. They knew, too, that for all his bluster, he trusted them.  
  
He wouldn’t have sent the girl otherwise.  
  
Or the note.  
  
It sat on the bedside table, two words in his untidy scrawl.  
  
 _Do better._  
  
They would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> With me writing, of course it ends with Jesper and Wylan cuddling. (I actually looked up that word's etymology, and it's not an anachronism! Cuddling empowerment.) I always imagine their dynamic that way, Wylan being deeply driven and an utter failure at self-care, while Jesper agrees with him but occasionally just has to be like, "Hey, maybe stop being so clothed and awake, Wylan." Kind of a heart of the city/heart of the family dynamic.
> 
> But, back to why I deviated from canon! Scrooge hadn't lived the razor's-edge life Kaz did, and he genuinely was greedy, whereas Kaz never wanted money for money's sake--all of the Crows wanted something else. Kaz wanted revenge, Jesper was in debt, Inej wanted to pay off her contract, etc. That was why I chose to end the story with Kaz only slightly changed, his flaws lacked the frivolity of Scrooge's greed. 
> 
> Rambling aside, I hope you've enjoyed my Crows/Carol crossover! If you want to read a fic with a similar premise but less of my cynicism, check out Lynn_Forster's [A Christmas Carol in Ketterdam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271496). And if you want to make my day, leave a review or kudos!


End file.
